TM(Advertisement)
Tube City Community Media Inc. is seeking freelance writers to help cover city council, news and feature stories in McKeesport, Duquesne, White Oak and the neighboring communities. High school and college students seeking work experience are encouraged to apply; we are willing to work with students who need credit toward class assignments. Please send cover letter, resume, two writing samples and the name of a reference (an employer, supervisor, teacher, etc. -- not a relative) to tubecitytiger@gmail.com.
Ads start at $1 per day, minimum seven days.
Local Residents Participated in Saturday's Anti-Gun Violence March
By Staff Reports
The Tube City Almanac
March 26, 2018
Posted in: McKeesport and Region News
(All photos: Vickie Babyak, special to Tube City Almanac)
Mon Valley residents joined a crowd estimated at more than 30,000 who took to the streets of downtown Pittsburgh on Saturday to protest gun violence.
The rally was one of dozens held Saturday in cities across the United States --- one source says as many as 450 events were held --- under the banner "March for Our Lives," and organized in the wake of a mass shooting at a high school in Parkland, Fla., in which 17 people died and another 17 were injured.
All 50 states hosted at least one March for Our Lives rally, with at least 1.2 million people believed to have participated nationwide. A March for Our Lives rally in Washington, D.C., attracted upwards of 200,000 people, according to crowd estimates made from digital photos.
Tube City Almanac correspondent Vickie Babyak attended the Pittsburgh event with a friend from the Mon Valley. "Both of us work with students and have children --- and I have grandchildren," she says. "We are concerned with the violence and the lockdown drills schools put students through because of mass shootings."
Babyak says she's concerned about the psychological effect that such drills have on children. "I recently read a comment on social media (that it's) much different from practicing for natural disasters than practicing to protect yourself from someone hunting you down to kill you," she says.
The crowd was respectful, Babyak says, and comprised families with children, the elderly and teen-agers. Pittsburgh police officers were professional but friendly, she says.
"Everything went peacefully as far as I know," says Babyak, who walked with the marchers from the City-County Building on Grant Street to Market Square. Marchers were led by a group of students and escorted by Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto.
Babyak says her fellow marchers had a variety of concerns; many wanted assault weapons banned, or to curb the influence that they said the National Rifle Association has on elected officials.
But everyone, Babyak says, was angry about shootings in schools, and about gun violence targeting children and teen-agers.
"Some people chanted 'This is what democracy looks like,'" she says. "I was told they were expecting about three thousand people, and 30,000 people showed up."
All photos: © Vickie Babyak, special to Tube City Almanac. For reprints, email vbabyak@yahoo.com.
Originally published March 26, 2018.
In other news:
"Special Funding Will …" || "Route 837 Work Begins…"